Your Getting Started Tutorial for OSMap

Getting Started with OSMap

A Joomla sitemap will help Google and other search engines find and understand your site's content. OSMap is the best Joomla sitemap extension.

It is the easiest way to add a sitemap to your Joomla site. All you need to do is install OSMap and it will do the rest. OSMap will automatically create a Google-friendly sitemap for all your content.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to get started with OSMap.

Read more: Your Getting Started Tutorial for OSMap

The Joomlashack Conference is Online: November 6th, 7th and 8th

The Joomlashack Conference is Online: November 6th, 7th and 8th

Five years ago, our team held an online Joomla Day with over 20 speakers from around the world. Over 1,000 people attended! You can see videos from that event on YouTube.

I'm delighted to say we're planning to host another online Joomla Day on November 6th, 7th and 8th.

Many of you don't live close to an in-person Joomla event, so this online version can reach many more people. Just like any normal Joomla event, we'll have presentations of 30 to 40 minutes, followed by questions.

Update: The Conference schedule is now live.

Read more: The Joomlashack Conference is Online: November 6th, 7th and 8th

How to Create a Field with Countries in Shack Forms

How to Create a Field with Countries in Shack Forms

You can very quickly and easily build Joomla forms with our Shack Forms Joomla extension. Your form can be fairly simple, collecting just a name and an email. 

With Shack Forms, you can also quickly build a more advanced form. One of our customers asked how to allow a form submitter to select their country.

In this blog tutorial, I'll show you how to create a field with countries in Shack Forms.

Read more: How to Create a Field with Countries in Shack Forms

Say Hello to Shack Slides: the Joomlashack Slideshow Extension

Say Hello to Shack Slides: the Joomlashack Slideshow Extension

Joomla and Joomlashack have been around for over 14 years now.

So many things have changed in that time. But, many of the very best Joomla extensions are still going strong! Watchful did a survey of the most popular Joomla extensions and the winners all launched in 2006 and 2007.

We have one extension that's been at Joomlashack since those days: Shack Slides.

Read more: Say Hello to Shack Slides: the Joomlashack Slideshow Extension

How to Add an Image Above a Field in Shack Forms

How to Add an Image Above a Field in Shack Forms

One of the reasons for the Shack Forms Pro popularity is its flexibility. With Shack Forms, you have many options to change your Joomla form design without touching any code.

One of our customers asked how to add an image above a field in their Shack Form. In this blog post, I'll show you how you can do this.

Read more: How to Add an Image Above a Field in Shack Forms

How to Use OSCampus, the Joomla LMS

OSCampus is our popular Learning Management System (LMS) for Joomla. This Joomla extensions is incredibly robust and is already used by 1,000's of people every week.

In this getting started guide, I'll show you how to add OSCampus to your site.

OSCampus is organized in a very simple way: Classes contain Lessons. Everything is a secondary feature, so we'll focus on setting up those core elements.

Read more: How to Use OSCampus, the Joomla LMS

Joomlashack Changelogs Are Now Easier to Find

Joomlashack Changelogs Are Easier to Find

Last week, we got the news that Joomlashack is one of the most popular extension developers in Joomla.

With a large number of users, your feature requests come in thick-and-fast.

Some of the feature requests are major, such as "Can you build an eCommerce extension?" Spoiler: we're working on it.

Read more: Joomlashack Changelogs Are Now Easier to Find

Joomla eCommerce Users: Are You Ready for SCA?

Joomla eCommerce Users: Are You Ready for SCA and PSD2?

Last year, website owners needed to deal with the new European privacy laws known as GDPR. We wrote a guide to Joomla and the GDPR.

This year, there are new European rules that involve eCommerce. There are two names for these new requirements:

  • PSD2: Payment Services Directive.
  • SCA: Strong Customer Authentication.

PSD2 is the overall set of laws and SCA is the specific group of regulations launching this month. So SCA is what we're going to talk about in this post.

Read more: Joomla eCommerce Users: Are You Ready for SCA?

How to Display YouTube Video as a URL with OSYouTube Pro

How to Display YouTube Video as a URL with OSYouTube Pro

One of our customers asked how to display a YouTube video only as a URL link.

This is possible with OSYouTube Pro. The parameter that makes this possible is "Ignore HTML links".

In this blog post, I'll show you how to embed a YouTube video just as a URL

Read more: How to Display YouTube Video as a URL with OSYouTube Pro

Why We Use Watchful for Joomla Site Maintenance

Why We Use Watchful for Joomla Site Maintenance

Joomlashack is one of the most popular Joomla sites.

Actually, that's not really true. Joomlashack is actually over 40 Joomla sites.

We've got at least 20 sites for template demos. We've got extension demo sites, test sites, client sites and more. Joomlashack.com is a big and sprawling network of sites.

Read more: Why We Use Watchful for Joomla Site Maintenance